The sensitive plant. Introd. by Edmund Gosse

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INTRODUCTION

HE SENSITIVE
PLANT was first
published in the " Prome-
theus Bound and other
Poems" of 1820, a
volume which contained
as little second-rate or unnecessary -
verse as any volume of a like size that
ever was issued. It cannot, however,
have been included in the original cast of
that book, of which the MS. was shipped
to Oilier from Florence in December
1819. "The Sensitive Plant7' must have
been among the " additions " which Shelley
sent to London with the proofs of his
drama <May 26, 1 820), if not with those
which accompanied the final revise in July.
The original manuscript is in the book

=v=

LJI

I

Vll

of Shelley papers which is now preserved in the library of
Harvard College, where it is dated "March 1820." On
the 26th of the preceding January, Shelley with his wife
and child and Claire Clairmont had left Florence, which
he thought injurious to his health, and had travelled by
boat and carriage to Pisa / here they settled at an inn which
bore the sign of the "Tre Donzelle." For some weeks,
and until the flutter of his nerves subsided, Shelley did no
work, and it is highly probable that " The Sensitive Plant "
was the earliest of the splendid series of his Pisan poems.

It appears from some notes which Medwin prepared for
a possible second edition of his "Life of Shelley" that
"the source of the inspiration" of "The Sensitive Plant"
was a lady whom few among Shelley's biographers mention,
and of whom no one of them has told us as much as he
might have collected. When the Shelleys arrived in Pisa
they had but a single acquaintance there, Lady Mountcashell,
and for a long time they saw no one but her and her com-
panion. The place held by this interesting and highly-
cultivated woman in the closing years of Shelley's career
was much larger than has been generally perceived or
admitted. Shelley described Lady Mountcashell to Medwin
" as a superior and accomplished woman, and a great
resource to him." He read Greek with her and she was
" the source of the inspiration " of his " Sensitive Plant," and
the scene of it was laid in her garden.

Medwin proceeds to tell us that this garden was, in dull
reality, "as unpoetical a place as could well be imagined."
The " Power in this sweet place," the " Eve in this Eden,"
was not less in need of being gazed at through the enchanted
haze of illusion. In a letter written a month later than the
poem, Shelley described her as "a lady of forty-five, very
unprejudiced and philosophical, who has entered deeply into

viii

the best and selectest spirit of the age, with enchanting
manners, and a disposition rather to like me/' In another
and less-known letter <to Hogg, April 20), he speaks with
enthusiasm of " a most interesting woman, in whose society
we spend much of our time,- you will have some idea of
the sort of person/' he continues, " when I tell you that I am
now reading with her the ' Agamemnon ' of Alschylus."
This pleasant impression was presently confirmed, and it
continued to exist until the close of Shelley's life, all the
references to Lady Mountcashell <the " Mrs. M." of the Pisa
correspondence) being cordial and confidential. But, as the
inspiration of that " Lady, the wonder of her kind/7 whose
" aery footstep " and " trailing hair " made her to her flowers
" as God is to the starry scheme/' the amiable Irish peeress
was in need of all the extravagance of a poet's vision to
support her.

Margaret Jane, Countess of Mountcashell, was at this
time nearer fifty than "forty-five" years of age, and we
gather that at no period of her life had she been diaphanous
or aerial. Twenty years earlier, Godwin had described her
as " uncommonly tall and brawny, with bad teeth, white eyes
and a handsome countenance, but with gigantic arms, which
she commonly folds, naked, and exposed almost to the
shoulders." With the advance of years, she had grown
more solid still, but there was yet a charm about her
majestic presence. She was refined, sentimental and serene,-
she had an infinite benevolence, and a calmness which was
delicious to the tortured sensibilities of the poet. Her career
had been unconventional enough and unfettered enough to
satisfy the strange band which the Shelleys always collected
about them in Italy, and now proceeded to reinforce at Pisa.
The eldest daughter of the second Earl of Kingston, she had
injbyed the distinction of being the favourite pupil of Mary

ix

Wollstonecroft, who went over to Ireland in the autumn
of 1 787 to be governess to the daughters of the Earl <then
Lord Kingsborough). A warm friendship grew up between
Lady Margaret and her teacher, so warm that Lady
Kingsborough dismissed the latter late in 1788, on the pre-
tence that Mary Wollstonecroft had supplanted her in the
affections of her daughter. Friendly relations, however,
seem to have been maintained, and perhaps continued until
the death of Mary Wollstonecroft, and the birth of Shelley's
wife.

Meanwhile, Margaret, of the giant arms, married Stephen
Moore, the second Karl of Mountcashell, with whom her life
was very unhappy. She fell in love with Mr. George W.
Tighe of Rosanna, and, doing full justice to the teaching of
her eminent governess, she retired with that gentleman to
Italy. A rich strain of rebellion ran through the family, since
Lady Mountcasheirs younger sister had eloped with the
notorious Colonel Fitzgerald, whom Lord Kingsborough
pursued into an hotel at Mitchelstown and shot dead/ while
her mother herself, in spite of the rigour of her principles,
fled from the society of her husband, the Earl, whom she
rejoined no more. Lady Mountcashell and her lover were
of mature age/ they adopted the name of Mr. and Mrs.
Marsh, by which they were known wherever they were still
known at all. Almost at exactly the date of Shelley's
drowning, Lord Mountcashell died in Ireland, and his widow
immediately married Mr. Tighe. They continued, however,
to reside in Italy, and apparently in so great retirement, that
none of the early admirers of Shelley had the opportunity of
consulting Mrs. Tighe before her death in 1835. It is to be
regretted that one who saw so much of Shelley at the height
of his genius, and who was so well calculated to appreciate
his character and intellect, should have left scarcely a trace

on his biography. It may be conjectured that it was through
the Gisbornes <Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of Godwin)
that Mary Wolistonecrofr/s old pupil was introduced to
Mary Godwin's husband, when the exodus was made from
Florence to Pisa.

That the poet was aware of the inadequacy of old Lady
Mountcashell, with her stately tread and her huge arms,
to represent the delicate heroine of his fairy-tale, may be
gathered from the fact that, in the beginning of 1822, when
he had formed an intimate friendship with the youthful Jane
Williams, Shelley wrote that the latter, " we all agree, is the
exact antitype of the Lady I described in 'The Sensitive
Plant/ though this must have been a pure anticipated cog-
nition, as it was written a year before I knew her/' This
seems a more appropriate designation.

It remains for us to endeavour to realise exactly what plant
it was which Shelley had in mind when he composed this
poem. The problem is not so simple as it appears. It is
easy to say that the acacia-like Sensitive Plant, which grows
n many English green-houses, bears the Latin name of
" Mimosa pudica,77 given to it by Linnseus, and is a native
of Brazil, is the obvious object of Shelley's muse. We may
add that it has inconspicuous tufts of small pink blossoms,
that its leaves may be described as " fan-like/7 and that it
certainly opens them y/tothe light " and closes them " beneath
the kisses of Night/7 Here, however, difficulties begin to
crowd upon us, and even the non-expert reader, if he con-
siders the poem with care, will begin to be in doubt whether
Shelley was certainly thinking of "Mimosa pudica.77 Mrs-
Shelley, in her preface to the " Posthumous Poems77 of 1824,
says of her husband that " he knew every plant by its name,
and was familiar with the history and habits of every
production of the earth/7 This seems categorical, but we

xi

may be permitted to doubt whether Mrs. Shelley was herself
capable of testing the accuracy of such " observations on
natural objects/'

In this dilemma, I have appealed to an eminent friend. His
report, most kindly supplied to me, completes my bewilder-
ment. From Mr. S. H. Vines, the Sherardian Professor of
Botany at Oxford, I learn, what I had long suspected, that
the botany of the poets is a source of deep anxiety to
botanists. Shelley's flower-lore forms no exception. In the
first place, the chief characteristic of the real sensitive plant
is its response by movement to the stimulus of a touch or
shake. But, unless the second stanza of Part III can be so
interpreted, Shelley's sensitive plant responds only to the
alternation of light and darkness. But here a wide field is
opened, since there are many leguminous plants, besides
" Mimosa/7 which have leaves that sleep at night and waken
in the day. According to the poem, moreover, the plant
appears to be evergreen and to be of considerable size.

In the attempt, however, to identify Shelley's plant with
" Mimosa pudica," which is a straggling shrub not attaining
a height of more than three or four feet when grown in a
hot-house, the question of temperature becomes a very
difficult one. For " Mimosa pudica " would not grow in an
open garden at Pisa, or anywhere else in Italy, if the climate
involved frost. But if the climate did not involve frost, then
the Sensitive Plant could not be killed by it, and the poem
loses its point. The only theory upon which the facts stated
in the poem are prosaically explicable, is that the Sensitive
Plant was bedded out, from a hot-house, for the summer,
and was left to perish with cold when winter came.

Probably Shelley did not regard botanical exactitude in a
case where the symbol of a sensitive moral delicacy was
the main object of his imagination. He probably supposed

xii

that the veritable Sensitive Plant <" Mimosa "> could grow-
in a southern garden, and did not trouble himself further.
It is odd that he did not, in this very connection, dwell upon
the stimulus of touch upon the exquisite pinnate leaflets of
the plant, and that he should seem to conceive it almost as
a tree for size and conspicuous expanse. But these con-
siderations are of merely curious significance. It is more
important to notice that he manifestly identifies himself and
his own passionate genius with the humble-growing plant of
extreme sensitiveness to darkness and to cold. And this
conception of his nervous condition and temperament repeats
itself very frequently in many of the lyrics written at Pisa.
We find it manifested in "The Zucca" <a poem which has
much in common with "The Sensitive Plant ">, in "The
Serpent is shut out of Paradise/7 and in " Music/7 But we
may close with two passages from Shelley's correspondence
in which this hypersensitiveness is expressed in terms which
are directly reminiscent of the poem before us. On the 16th
of January 1821, he wrote "The wind, the light, the scent
of a flower, affects me with violent emotions " / and to Claire
Clairmont, on the 1 1th of December of the same year, "The
Exotic, as you please to call me, droops in this frost— a
frost both moral and physical— a solitude of the heart. . . .
The Exotic, unfortunately belonging to the order of
'Mimosa/ thrives ill in so large a society/7 These passages
very plainly identify the Poet with the exquisite subject of

his verses.

EDMUND GOSSE

SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan— like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.

17

II

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere /
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

18

Ill

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness,
Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want
As the companionless Sensitive Plant.

21

IV

The snowdrop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument

V

Then the pied wind— flowers and the tulip tail,
And narcissi, the fairest among them alt
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness /

23

VI

And the Naiad— like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green /

-

VII

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense/

25

VIII

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare /

IX

And the wand— like lily, which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight— coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky /

29

X

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows,-
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

30

XI

And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,

31

XII

Broad water— lilies lay tremulously,

And starry river— buds glimmered by,

And around them the soft stream did glide and dance

With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.

32

XIII

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,
Which led through the garden along and across,
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,

35

XIV

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells

As fair as the fabulous asphodels,

And flow'rets which, drooping as day drooped too,

Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,

To roof the glow— worm from the evening dew.

36

XV

And from this undefiled Paradise
The flowers <as an infant's awakening eyes
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),

37

XVI

When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them,
As mine— lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun /

38

XVII

For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere,

41

XVIII

But the Sensitive Plant which could give small fruit
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
Received more than all, it loved more than ever,
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver :

42

XIX

For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower,-
Radiance and odour are not its dower/
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full
It desires what it has not, the Beautiful!

43

XX

The light winds which from unsustaining wings
Shed the music of many murmurings/
The beams which dart from many a star
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar/

44

XXI

The plumed insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odour, which pass
Over the gleam of the living grass /

45

XXII

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,
Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears,-

46

XXIII

The quivering vapours of dim noontide,
Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide,
In which every sound, and odour and beam,
Move, as reeds in a single stream/

49

XXIV

Each and all like ministering angels were
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear,
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by
Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky.

XXV

And when evening descended from Heaven above,
And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep,
And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep,

51

XXVI

And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned
In an ocean of dreams without a sound/
Whose waves never mark though they ever impress
The light sand which paves it, consciousness/

52

XXVII

<Only overhead the sweet nightingale

Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,

And snatches of its Elysian chant

Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant)/

54

XXVIII

The Sensitive Plant was the earliest
Upgathered into the bosom of rest /
A sweet child weary of its delight,
The feeblest and yet the favourite,
Cradled within the embrace of Night.

57

1

HERE was a Power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this Eden / a ruling Grace
Which to the flowers, did they waken

or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.

59

II

A Lady, the wonder of her kind,
Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion
Like a sea— flower unfolded beneath the ocean,

60

Ill

Tended the garden from morn to even :
And the meteors of that sublunar Heaven,
Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth,
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!

IV

She had no companion of mortal race,
But her tremulous breath and her flushing face
Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes,
That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise :

65

V

As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake
Had deserted Heaven while the stars were awake,
As if yet around her he lingering were,
Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.

66

VI

Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed/
YOU might hear by the heaving of her breast,
That the coming and going of the wind
Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.

69

VII

And wherever her aery footstep trod,
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep/
Like a sunny storm o'er the dark green deep.

70

VIII

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet/
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers through all their frame.

71

IX

She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam /
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
She emptied the rain of the thunder— showers.

72

X

She lifted their head with her tender hands,
And sustained them with rods and osier— bands/
If the flowers had been her own infants, she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly.

75

XI

And all killing insects and gnawing worms,
And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
She bore, in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof,—

76

XII

In a basket, of grasses and wild— flowers full,
The freshest her gentle hands could pull
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent

77

XIII

But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris
Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she
Make her attendant angels be.

78

XIV

And many an antenatal tomb,
Where butterflies dream of the life to come,
She left clinging round the smooth and dark
Edge of the odorous cedar bark.

79

XV

This fairest creature from earliest Spring
Thus moved through the garden ministering
All the sweet season of Summertide,
And ere the first leaf looked brown— she died!

HREE days the flowers of the garden fair,
^^*| ^ Like stars when the moon is awakened,

L^TJ^^ were,

Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.

81

: \

II

And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant
Felt the sound of the funeral chant,
And the steps of the bearers heavy and slow,
And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low /

82

Ill

The weary sound and the heavy breath,
And the silent motions of passing death,
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,
Sent through the pores of the coffin— plank;

85

IV

The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass/
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone,
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan,

86

V

The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,
Then slowly changed till it grew a heap
To make men tremble who never weep.

87

VI

Swift Summer into the Autumn flowed,
And frost in the mist of the morning rode,
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,
Mocking the spoil of the secret night.

\

VII

The rose— leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Paved the turf and the moss below,
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,
Like the head and the skin of a dying man,

89

m

VIII

And Indian plants of scent and hue
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,
Leaf after leaf, day after day,
Were massed into the common clay.

90

IX

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,
And white with the whiteness of what is dead,
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed/
Their whistling noise make the birds aghast,

91

X

And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds,
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,
Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem,
Which rotted into the earth with them,

92

XI

The water— blooms under the rivulet
Fell from the stalks on which they were set
And the eddies drove them here and there,
As the wind did those of the upper air,

95

XII

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks
Were bent and tangled across the walks/
And the leafless network of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin/ and all sweet flowers.

96

XIII-

Between the time of the wind and the snow
All loathliest weeds began to grow,
Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,
Like the water— snake's belly and the toad's back.

XIV

And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank,
Stretched out its long and hollow shank,
And stifled the air till the dead wind stank,

100

XV

And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.

101

XVI

Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake,
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake,
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high,
Infecting the winds that wander by.

-102

XVII

And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould
Started like mist from the wet ground cold/
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead
With a spirit of growth had been animated!

103

XVIII

Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,

Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,

And at its outlet flags huge as stakes

Dammed it up with roots knotted like water— snakes.

104

XIX

And hour by hour, when the air was still,
The vapours arose which have strength to ki]
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,
At night they were darkness no star could melt.

XX

And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
Crept and flitted in broad noonday
Unseen/ every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burned and bit.

106

XXI

The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves, which together grew,
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.

109

XXII

For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn /
The sap shrank to the root through every pore
As blood to a heart that will beat no more

110

XXIII

For Winter came: the wind was his whip:

One choppy finger was on his lip:

He had torn the cataracts from the hills

And they clanked at his girdle like manacles/

111

XXIV

His breath was a chain which without a sound
The earth, and the air, and the water bound/
He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot— throne
By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.

112

XXV

Then the weeds which were forms of living death
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath.
Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!

113

XXVI

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want:
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air
And were caught in the branches naked and bare,

114

XXVII

First there came down a thawing rain
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again/
Then there steamed up a freezing dew
Which to the drops of the thaw— rain grew/

117

XXVIII

And a northern whirlwind, wandering about
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,
Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy, and stiff,
And snapped them off with his rigid griff

118

XXIX

When Winter had gone and Spring came back
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck/
But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels,
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.

119

CONCLUSION

HETHER the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a Spirit sat,
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt this change, I cannot say.

II

Whether that Lady's gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness, where it left delight,

Ill

I dare not guess/ but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,

123

IV

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.

V

That garden sweet, that lady fair,

And all sweet shapes and odours there,

In truth have never passed away:

Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed / not they.

127

VI

For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change: their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

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BINDING SECT.

PR Shelley, Percy Bysshe
5422 The sensitive plant
84
1820

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